2nd draft feedback

As we had used the editing list after the first draft, most of the feedback was positive. However there were, as expected, still minor edits that we must make in order to produce our final piece to the best standard we can achieve. For example, our teacher and other people we had screened the second draft too had made various comments on the music chosen. Although it connoted that the character Joseph was disturbed, it was fairly overpowering and moved a bit too far away from the 'thriller' genre. In order to change this, our group began to focus on searching for music during lessons, as well as discussing further changes we needed to make for our third draft.

Another change we had decided on was cutting out some filler clips, such as walking, and replacing them with extended shots of Joseph's stare to create suspense, as well as more dialogue. This slowed the pace of transitions and lowered the length of some shots towards the end; making them less frantic and more calm and systematic. This reflected Joseph as a character, as he is much less active when in school.

2nd draft

As we planned on re-shooting some shots as well as deciding on which font to use, we did not include titles or colour correction in this edit. Instead, we have just replaced footage from the old draft with the new re-shot footage. Our group was mostly happy with the footage we had taken by this point and decided that the only re-shoots possibly needed would be one's from the school scene.

Filming 2nd draft

For our second draft we decided to re-shoot the majority as there were multiple changes we had to make. This took up a lot of time, therefore Ashley was unable to make it to the re-shooting at Elk meadows, however he did view the footage before it was edited- giving his input.

Before filming at Elk meadows, we re-shot the footage at school which went rather smoothly. We added extra dialogue as we felt that a discussion between two people would gain more marks that just one persons dialogue alone.

In doing this, the character of 'Joseph' was better established as we were able to present his calmness and other persona when in public. This adds to the creepy and thrilling nature of Joseph. As we did not change too much, we decided not to draw out a storyboard, and instead proceed with filming in order to keep the project moving and allowing more time for re-shoots.

Filming at Elk meadows again was just as beneficial. We decided to shoot in the evening in order to acquire darker lighting to fit the opening threat video which is set in the morning- when it would be dark.

This shoot went very quickly as we understood the set more and had less camera angles and shots to decide on. Most shots were kept the same, we just ensured there was no shaky-cam or bad match-on-action between shots, unlike last time. This greatly improved the look of some shots when reviewing the footage. Unfortunately, as Ashley could not make it, preparing the scene took a little bit longer.

Title sequence planning

My group and I each had input in deciding what our titles would be for the final cut, and stuck to that for most drafts. Benoit done most of the editing for this point in as they were only small jobs which he was capable of achieving himself.

The font we decided on was very similar to that of the opening title, however we did change it throughout drafts as we felt it could be improved multiple times.

The final choice was clean and small; enabling the viewer to focus most of their attention towards what was going on in the shot as oppose to being distracted by an overly large title.

Evaluation after first draft (editing list)

After showing the teacher our first draft he gave us very useful feedback which we will take into filming our next draft. We have added our own notes as well as points made by Mr.Ford into this editing list.

Overall we are happy with our first draft as the feedback was somewhat positive, meaning the improvements we need to make are clear and achievable. Hopefully, we will only need to re-shoot once or twice in order to achieve reasonably high marks on our coursework.

Final piece (draft #1)

(1st draft)

This draft is far off of our final piece as we had not yet edited in the titles and final audio pieces which we may dub in. This is just a rough idea of the shots we will use which has helped us to decide on changes we will make in the second draft, which we will again re-shoot at least one more time.

Editing 1st draft

Here is Benoit's blog post on editing the first draft:

'Preview screen from the editing session'

For the first editing session my aim was to at least have a complete draft of our entire sequence that only included the footage itself without the credits or any other visuals added within post-production.

As the director of this project I wanted to approach this editing session with the intentions of taking the footage we had captured throughout the entire course of filming and then edit the sequence to match frame by frame with the animatic. 

'Editing timeline from the rough-cut'

I approached this idea by overlapping the edit I had made for the animatic with the footage for the sequence to ensure that the shots played for the exact amount of time it was intended to last instead of possibly changing the way we planned the sequence to be.

Once the sequence had been assembled, co-editor 'Jamie Gerrish' and I spent a large amount of time playing the sequence repeatedly and analysing our project in order to then see what's the most logical way to handle our project throughout the rest of post-production.

After Jamie and I spent while screening the sequence, we had compiled a list on what needs to be altered within the edit of our sequence; we then came to a conclusion that we must re-shooting the entire sequence. This decision was made after looking at the footage we had already taken and realising what worked and what didn't; then caused us to learn from our first attempt and execute it better in the re-shoots.

Once we all had got together as a group, we all had watched the sequence then Jamie and I explained our thoughts on what we need to change in terms of the editing of the sequence but also explaining why we should re-shoot the entire project. Once the rest of our group had understood our judgement and came to terms with this idea we all collectively agreed on the decision.

Personally I found screening the first draft very insightful as it gave both Benoit and myself many ideas of things we needed to change in the re-shoots. After consulting with our teacher and the rest of our group we made a list of parts of the opening that we needed to fix or change completely.